Matt Damon has, somewhat surprisingly, not hosted SNL since the first episode in season 28, all the way back in 2002. That’s a long time ago! His Good Will Hunting co-star and friend Ben Affleck has hosted four times since then! But Damon was in Studio 8H for the final episode of the year, with musical guests Miley Cyrus and Mark Ronson (who will presumably perform their new song “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”), and during his monologue, he talked about all the things that’s happened over the last 16 years, including getting married, having three kids, and not working in a Massachusetts car wash with Affleck.
But most of Damon’s monologue was dedicated to his father, who passed away last year. “Growing up, my brother and I would go to my dad’s house every other weekend, and he told us if he could stay up until 1 a.m., we could watch Saturday Night Live. So, week after week, I tried to stay up, and it wasn’t until I was eight years old that I made it all the way until the end,” Damon said, a tradition he passed on to his kids, including his youngest daughter who was told she, too, could stay up and watch the episode. “Who’s hosting?” she asked. “I said, me, your dad, Matt Damon.” And she said, “Who’s the musical guest?”
Damon then raised a toast to all the “moms and dads who let their kids stay up too late for all the right reasons.”
